MICROSOFT results Q4 and Full Year earnings. Huge.

[DonFerrari]

Ganoncrotch said:

DonFerrari said:

Some people hate those ads on things they paid a lot for =p (but sure it's added revenue)

And it's a management golden rule to find a niche where you can be blue ocean =] and no one can claim MS as a corporation doesn't know how to make money

I don't think anyone is going to not use the brand because of those little advert box things though, 99.99% of users will happy just ignore them and you might even get the odd person who finds the advert for something useful or interesting to them, but because of things like those advert window then MS is keen to get the Win10 OS (for better or worse) to more and more people, they've even been super lax about cracking down on pirate copies of the OS because they'll still reap income from those adverts over time from people using it, as well as data collection from usage to sell to advertising companies.

I just look at it like this. MS create a OS which would cost 150, but they work out a way that by customers having said OS and using it they'll get MS more than that amount in value of data to sell to their partners and in direct advertising funds. For me... good on them, they get their money and I amn't the one who directly has to hand over cash for it. It's Win/Win/Win at the end of the day.

Sure, I wouldn't change my ownership or platform because of some silly ad (unless it really got in the way of my enjoyment).

MS wasn't ever really much worried about pirate Windows and Office at home. For them that have always been a mean to keep a humongous userbase that likes to use windows and them on the companies they end up having to use MS products (and the licenses are a lot more expensive). It is almost predatory that other OS and SW companies can't really penetrate the market because MS not only have a big footprint, it's easy to for users to get "free copy" and those competitors would be able to invest a lot to get a better system and give for free.

And with the Ads they collect even more money now. Perhaps if they made it during Windows XP they would have had major complains, but because of YT, Spotfy and others that have ads everywhere for you to use for free, public is so used that the way Windows 10 and X1 implemented doesn't even bother most.